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Entries from March 2010

March 10th, 2010 ·

I received a disconcerting voicemail message the other day from a manager at an engineering consulting firm. She explained that she was looking for a freelance writer in Dallas and had come across my website. However, she wasn’t sure whether I was still available for projects, since I had not updated the blog on my site since early 2009.

~gulp

It is often the case that the cobbler’s children have no shoes, and this holds true for my own marketing efforts, as well. Very often, managers and business owners are so busy handling the day-to-day affairs of their enterprise that they overlook their most valuable promotional tool: their Website.

If you’re in the same boat, you would be wise to show your site some love. If you don’t, your competitors could get the upperhand.

Case in point: As one might imagine, my website has been search engine optimized for the term Dallas freelance writer. And, my efforts at search engine optimization have paid off, because (at present), my site comes up #1 on Google for this keyword phrase.

But, not for long.

Although the core content is well-crafted and I’ve done some clever behind-the-scenes coding to improve the site’s SEO, unless I continue to post fresh, relevant content to my humble blog, it will gradually lose authority with the major search engines. And, when a site loses authority, it falls in the search rankings.

The same thing will happen with your website, if you do not keep the content up to date.

For this reason, many companies are choosing to add a blog to their existing website, or to build a new site on a blog engine (also known as the content management system, or CMS). Using the blog format makes it easy to add content on the fly, without having to know a lot of tricky HTML code or worry about “breaking” the design template. And, search engines like fresh content.

If you don’t want to create a blog, you can add content to your site by posting press releases (in HTML text, not a PDF) or by adding recent case studies and client testimonials. Keeping your site up-to-date needn’t be a major undertaking; even adding 300 words of text once a month will have a positive impact on how the search engines view your content.

So, take it from me, your trusty Dallas freelance writer — no matter how busy you are serving clients and managing business operations, don’t overlook your Website. It is your face to the outside world, and you should always put your best face forward. If you don’t have the time or resources in-house to create fresh content at least once a month, drop me a line at leslie [at] lesliejthompson [dot] com. I’m happy to help.